Page 10 - General Raymond G Davis USMC

“NO SUBSTITUTE FOR VICTORY”?

This was something that President

Truman and his advisers decidedly did

not want: They were sure that such a war

would lead to Soviet aggression in

Europe, the deployment of atomic

weapons and millions of senseless deaths.

To General MacArthur, however,

anything short of this wider war

represented “appeasement,” an

unacceptable knuckling under to the communists.

As President Truman looked for a way to prevent war with the

Chinese, MacArthur did all he could to provoke it. Finally, in March

1951, he sent a letter to Joseph Martin, a House Republican leader

who shared MacArthur’s support for declaring all-out war on China

and who could be counted upon to leak the letter to the press. “There

is,” MacArthur wrote, “no substitute for victory” against international

communism.

For Truman, this

letter was the last

straw. On April 11,

the president fired

the general for

insubordination.